The Dream Called Konoha
by The Carnivorous Muffin
Summary: Eru Lee, after her disastrous battle with plant zombies, finds herself back in time in the clan war era creating paradoxes left and right. Tobirama tries to adjust to the new world order. Side fic of "Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds"


**Author's Note: A note that this is a side fic of "Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds" and that it is NOT CANON, for obvious reasons.**

* * *

"… So, you wouldn't have happened to see any plant zombies, would you?" the girl, at least Tobirama assumed it was a girl, gave an entirely too ridiculous grin given the situation.

The situation of course, being the ambush for Uchiha Madara, the eldest son of the head of the Uchiha family. Unfortunately, just as Tobirama had been tasked to tail his elder brother it seems that word had gotten back to the Uchiha as well, as Uchiha Tajima and Uchiha Izuna had both made an appearance along with young Madara.

At least, that was what had been happening until she had appeared out of nowhere.

She was clearly a shinobi, wearing a metal plated headband with the symbol of a simple leaf engraved in it, dull drab colors used for combat rather than a seductress' outfit or that of a medic nin. If Tobirama was any less observant, or perhaps had not had so much exposure to his budding weapons' mistress cousin Toka, he would have marked her as a particularly pretty adolescent boy instead of a young girl. Women, among all clans, were typically kept off the battlefield.

She also didn't look like any clan Tobirama had ever heard of. There were a few clans with red or blonde hair, the Uzumaki immediately came to mind, but the only clan with hair that kind of chaotic mess of voluminous curls was the Uchiha. More, there was something about her large green eyes, as well as her facial features, that looked like no one Tobirama had ever seen before. As if she was not merely from a strange clan, or outside the land of fire, but perhaps from some different continent entirely.

She also had managed, without a glance, with only the slightest twitch of her fingers, to freeze every one of them in their tracks like a Nara. Only, unlike a Nara, the girl wasn't touching their shadows.

"You see," she said with that same awkward grin, which really was starting to remind him of Hashirama, "I just had a run in with them and it wasn't… pleasant, I may actually be bleeding out. So, it's very important to know if I've managed to lose them or not."

She was clutching at her stomach this entire time, bleeding profusely just as she said, and on anyone else Tobirama would have said they were inches from death, but the girl was miraculously still standing. Not just standing, but casting ninjutsu (or perhaps genjutsu) strong enough to hold not only Tobirama, his brother, and his father but the three Uchiha as well.

She apparently took their silence as a negative, which Tobirama supposed was true, he certainly hadn't seen any… plant zombies. She sighed, rubbed the back of her head as if this was all quite frustrating, "So, no plant zombies then I guess… So, before I let you guys get back to beating the ever-loving shit out of each other, do you happen to know where we are?"

"You… don't know where you are?" Tobirama's father, Butsuma, managed to get out after a truly lengthy pause. Tobirama couldn't see from this angle, he was still frozen in such a way that his eyes were locked with Uchiha Izuna's (and he was looking as panicked and bewildered as Tobirama felt).

"Hey, teleportation is hard," the girl spit back petulantly, crossing her arms and leveling a glare at the head of the Senju clan as if he was dirt beneath her foot, "I'd like to see you try it after getting shanked by the photosynthesizing dead."

She then moved her arms in a truly exaggerated manner, "Look, if you don't know either then some kind of general direction will do. Konoha, east, west… North?"

"Konoha?" Hashirama asked, an odd sort of gleam in his eye as he said it, one Tobirama couldn't really parse except to think that this was neither the time nor the place for Hashirama not to take this seriously. His not taking this seriously, in fact, was what had led to this in the first place.

"Konohagakure, you know, one of the great five hidden villages, filled with tree huggers…" the girl trailed off at the end, her eyebrows raising higher in alarm as she took in the lack of comprehension on all of their faces.

Finally, she said rather blankly, "Well, I guess that explains why I'm having trouble pinpointing Minato."

She then pointed to her left and asked, still looking a bit alarmed, "Town, this direction?"

"Try your other left," Tobirama finally answered, feeling in something of a daze himself, and watched as the girl nodded towards him, smiled, and then her jaw fell open as she caught sight of him.

"The nidaime?" she asked in what seemed to be horrified recognition which… That had never happened before. Tobirama was well aware of how he looked, that he had inherited Uzumaki genes that had dwindled out of the clan centuries ago, but she wasn't looking at him the way outsiders or civilians did. No, it truly was recognition, as if she knew exactly who he was and had been dearly hoping not to see him. Calling him… the second of all things, but the second what?

"Medic first," the girl chided herself, quickly turning on her heel and deciding that it was apparently best to leave Senju Tobirama and his cohorts alone, "You are going to get yourself to a medic first!"

Then, just before she left the clearing, she spared them one last glance and a smile, "Thanks for the directions, even if this is all some bizarre fever dream I'm having in the midst of my death throes. I hope you have, well, I guess I won't call it a pleasant day since you all seem out for blood, but I hope it goes well."

Then she was gone, and they were released from her paralyzing jutsu, left staring at each other in dumb confusion and then looking after her walking towards the civilian road to the nearest town with all the confidence of either a fool or an invincible warrior.

Of course, Hashirama all too quickly took advantage of the ceasefire as he stepped between them, "Wait, everyone, while we're all still here and listening don't you see that we don't have to fight today! What are we possibly going to accomplish here like this?! The fight, the war, it can wait, nobody has to die today!"

Whether it was Hashirama's passion or the fact that Uchiha Madara managed to talk the Uchiha down as well, his older brother turned out to be right, no one died that day. Instead Uchiha and Senju both turned their backs on one another, the war between their clans waiting for some other morning, and Tobirama's fight with Izuna left unfinished for now.

Hashirama's mind though seemed to be somewhere else entirely, as he looked into the trees towards the road the girl had all too likely taken, "I wonder who that was."

If he was still thinking about Uchiha Madara, about the strange anonymous friendship the two seemed to have shared, about Tobirama's following him and reporting back to their father, and Hashirama's own betrayal at the prompting of their father and then Madara's betrayal as well then he didn't say anything about it. Likely, Tobirama thought, because their father was the one leading them back to the clan compound.

But then, though Hashirama was the only brother Tobirama had left, and though Tobirama had had little other choice in the matter and had clearly just saved his brother's life, he may not trust him with those kinds of thoughts again.

Dreams of a hopeful, utopian, future perhaps, but friendships with an Uchiha…

Well, Tobirama had clearly shown where he stood with that.

"Who knows," Tobirama responded under his breath just as their father responded, "A bastard Uzumaki, perhaps. Either way, we will find out soon enough"

Perhaps, but Tobirama thought not. She had the raw power of the Uzumaki, she had a hint of their hair, but she looked too foreign, more, if she was an Uzumaki then where were the chakra chains and where was the fuinjutsu? More, why would she not have simply sided with or even recognized the Senju?

Only at the end, when she'd looked at Tobirama, had she seemed to realize who she was dealing with. Even then, it hadn't been Tobirama as Senju Butsuma's second son, but instead as Senju Tobirama, the second.

No, his father's second statement was what he'd put faith in: they would find out soon enough. And, Tobirama didn't doubt that the Uchiha would try as well.

And that was the first time Senju Tobirama met the mysterious Eru Lee.

* * *

She wasn't an Uzumaki, neither was she some misplaced bastard Uchiha without the sharingan. She wasn't a Yamanaka, a Nara, didn't appear to be from a clan from some other country, and as far as Tobirama could gather seemed to have shown up out of nowhere.

Like she really had just appeared, tumbling out of nothingness, into the middle of their fight.

It was driving their father up the wall. For all that it didn't really matter, missions and battles between clans would always take priority, it was one of those nagging mysteries that could develop into some unseen threat.

If the girl came from a clan, with abilities like that, then she was worth keeping track of.

Except that she made it rather easy to keep track of her, some of the time at least.

True to her word she'd shown up in a small village up the road from the capital, nestled between the Senju and Uchiha clan territories, where she'd bartered in miracles of ninjutsu (somehow using ninjutsu to rearrange the doctor's house and create all sorts of strange equipment) and genjutsu to make treating a shinobi more appealing, for treatment from the local village medic, who in turn seemed to have thought it was a miracle she survived at all.

From there she'd stayed in the village a few days, reportedly had gone around asking rather strange questions about all sorts of things, like time travel, paradoxes, alternate realities, plant zombies, and worldwide illusions. Shortly after that she took to the road again towards the capital of the land of fire to do "some serious civilian research", and as far as Tobirama knew she had been there in the weeks since.

Not on any kind of mission, not looking for any particular clan or clansmen, just doing research into… Well, something. Tobirama supposed it was not really his business, not until the clan or she made it his business, but his thoughts strayed to her quite often.

Or, rather, to her techniques.

He supposed that it could be, and probably was, the results of blood limits. Her eyes had seemed strange enough to be a kind of dojutsu, he supposed… Except even then, there was a usually a sign of the sharingan or the byukagen activating and being put into use, and Tobirama was well aware that it took time to develop the sharingan into something truly terrifying and even then many branch members would reach its full potential.

And if it wasn't a blood limit then how the hell had she done it?!

Hashirama seemed equally as fascinated and distracted, if for different reasons.

"Tobi," he said, popping his head into Tobirama's room one afternoon while Tobirama was buried under notes and notes of fuinjutsu, trying to think through that teleportation technique she'd made, "Did I ever tell you what it was called?"

"What was what called?" Tobirama asked, stretching and trying not to sound irritated at Hashirama interrupting.

As he'd predicted things had been… tense, since the confrontation with the Uchiha. Hashirama had spoken with him, but had gone out of his way to avoid him, had been oddly quiet and solemn as he'd stared out the windows. He hadn't sought Tobirama out the way he used to and whenever they spoke it seemed as if there was some kind of wall between them.

Today though, Hashirama seemed to have made some kind of decision to forgive him, as he was smiling down at Tobirama with that familiar idiot's grin. Tobirama… He didn't realize how much he'd missed that expression.

Hashirama apparently took that as permission to burst in with his usual glee, instantly brightening Tobirama's room like a miniature sun dressed in the most eyewatering of colors and cringeworthy patterns, "You know, my dream, the one I told you about after Kawaarama and Itama…"

Hashirama trailed off, eyes growing wide and tears gathering at the corners of them, brought there by his own hasty and lighthearted words. Kawarama, then Itama… It was still too soon, Tobirama still expected to see Itama racing around every corner. Tobirama was tired of burying his brothers.

"Ah," Tobirama said simply, the only sound he could force himself to make. Then, clearing away the grief from his mind, he said softly, "I remember."

Hashirama's dream, a world without child shinobi, child soldiers… He had not had many details, when he'd first talked about it to Tobirama, but through several long nights after Itama's death the ideas had gotten more solid and tangible. A new shinobi system, one where there would be enough adults with enough previous training to eliminate the need for the constant supply of children in the field, where only the lucky and prodigious would survive into adulthood. Of course, even then, Tobirama had realized that this would require an alliance between all of the warring clans.

To create not simply feudal clans as they were now but instead a… a hidden village.

"You wanted to call it a hidden village," Tobirama said slowly, eyes widening, and Hashirama grinned in response.

"Not just a hidden village," Hashirama confessed, looking almost mischievous, "I guess I never talked to you much about it, I always talked to—"

He cut himself off, this time rather guiltily, his tanned face flushing bright crimson underneath Tobirama's unimpressed glare. Madara, Tobirama finished for Hashirama inside of his head, he always talked to Uchiha Madara about it.

And Tobirama could pinpoint exactly when Hashirama thought to himself that those days, that friendship, was now lost forever. He would never be talking to Uchiha Madara about his hidden village, or anything else, ever again.

Then the grin was back as if it had never left Hashirama's face and he was rambling onward once again, "Anyways, I decided that it'd be surrounded by forests, my forests and the natural forests of the land of fire, as well as the mountain range. I picked out a place for it and everything, you know, if we can get the land later."

He sounded so confident, Tobirama thought, as if this hidden village really was something that he, that they, could create. Like the hardest thing about it was simply acquiring the land right where Senju Hashirama wanted it, not forming alliances with the shinobi they'd been fighting for centuries, or even forging this new system that no one had even thought to dream of before.

A dream of peace so frightfully fragile, Tobirama thought, that he hadn't even dared to whisper it.

"So, given all the trees, I thought we should call it The Village Hidden in the Leaves," Hashirama said, before meaningfully repeated, "I thought we should call it Konohagakure."

Tobirama's eyes widened and he nearly, uncharacteristically, fell out of his chair. He remembered that name, even though it had only been said once and been said weeks ago at that, he remembered it perfectly.

The girl said she'd been looking for Konohagakure.

"You can't be serious," Tobirama breathed but his brother was grinning, darting towards him to help him off the floor and onto Tobirama's bed to sit next to him.

"You heard her, she was looking for Konoha—"

"There must be some other village—" Tobirama interrupted but Hashirama was already off to the races and nothing could stop him now.

"She called it a hidden village, one of the five great hidden village, and that it was filled with whatever a tree hugger was!" Hashirama said, eyes gleaming as he grabbed Tobirama by the shoulders too tightly, "And I've never heard of a village called Leaf!"

"There are many small villages that barely have names at all," Tobirama said as he tried to pry Hashirama's hands from his shoulders, "More, she said she was lost herself, she could be from some other country and I certainly don't know all the villages in the Land of Iron, do you?"

"But she knew who you were!" Hashirama said instead, "She looked right at you and knew exactly who you were, although I don't know why she'd call you 'the second', but that means she can't be from somewhere else either but she can't be from here either. Which means—"

"Which means there's some other logical explanation that we're—"

"That she's from some kind of different dimension or else the future where we've gone and made Konoha!" Hashirama concluded, and by the look on his face he'd concluded this already but was only now making it a point to tell Tobirama.

Tobirama could only stare at his older brother with his mouth hanging off his jaw, and then, with more certainty than he'd ever felt in his life state, "Brother, you're an idiot."

Hashirama's eyes went comically wide, his grip finally loosened, and Tobirama took the opportunity to pry himself from his brother's grasp as he stated, "No one, I repeat no one, can possibly be from another dimension let alone the future. She probably just knows someone who looks like me, or else is completely insane and dangerously powerful, which isn't a combination I particularly like but I suppose there's no helping it."

"Why not?" Hashirama asked, now filled with an enraged passion that Tobirama couldn't remember having seen on his brother's face. This… This meant a lot to him, Tobirama suddenly realized.

"Why not?" Tobirama repeated in confusion.

The hands were back, gripping his shoulders tighter than even before, as his brother cried out, "Why can't she be from the future, Tobi?! Chakra can make all sorts of crazy things possible!"

"Do you have any idea how much energy it would take to do something like that?" Tobirama asked, knowing full well that his brother didn't.

Hashirama was very gifted, was unbelievably good at the practical application of his skillset, but Tobirama had always been eerily intelligent. He wasn't as powerful as his brother on the battlefield, not as skilled, though skilled enough to avoid the fate of his younger brothers. However, when it came to the understanding of techniques and the mechanics of chakra behind them, his father had said that even at this young age Tobirama was unparalleled.

"Dimension crossing, perhaps, is possible," Tobirama admitted with reluctance, quickly continuing when Hashirama's face lit with a smug sort of hope, "However, the amount of chakra it would take to do something like that, to do it cleanly and without rupturing something vital to our world, would likely be beyond what the human body could possibly withstand. That, is the work of bijuu, not men."

"Time travel, however, is completely beyond the realm of all possibility," Tobirama said, standing from the bed and reaching over to his desk to sift through the many papers he'd been writing on and staring at for weeks now until he found the one he was looking for, "Consider light, it always moves at a constant speed."

"It does?" Hashirama asked, looking a little perplexed as Tobirama shoved the paper under his nose.

"Yes, it does, only it moves so quickly that we, even the sharingan, doesn't have time to perceive it," Tobirama said, "If you think about time not just as change, but as change in light and our ability to perceive the change happening, then to go backwards in time you have to move faster than light."

"Oh," Hashirama said, as if he understood when it was clear he didn't understand at all, "Well, that doesn't sound too hard."

"You can't move faster than light," Tobirama said.

"You can't?" Hashirama asked, "Maybe you just aren't trying hard enough."

"Nothing can move faster than light, brother," Tobirama repeated, feeling his irritation grow, "It is… a fundamental law of the universe. No amount of begging, no amount of will power, no amount of chakra can ever change it. To move faster than light requires infinite energy, infinite chakra, and simply can't be done."

"Huh," Hashirama said, blinking down at the paper, at the proofs Tobirama had poured through time and again regarding energy, the speed of light, mass, and acceleration, "And that's what all these squiggles you've written mean."

"Well, a little more than that," Tobirama said, "But yes."

"Right, I see," Hashirama said, and for a moment he seemed very serious in his contemplation, but then he grinned, "But she could still be from another dimension where a Konoha does exist."

"That's… That was not the point!" Tobirama cried out but Hashirama was already standing, leaving Tobirama's proof to fall to the floor as he burned with a new determination for this great shining era that he'd build with his own two hands.

That he was now irrationally certain that the mysterious girl had lived in.

"We'll find her, Tobi, track her down in the capital and learn all about the world she came from and how the other me and the other you managed it! We'll learn how to stop war between the Senju and the Uchiha, to make sure no one's little brother dies in battle, and we'll find world peace for everybody!"

"We?" Tobirama asked blinking, "Track her down? But, will father even—"

"We don't have any outstanding missions for a while, and going to the capital to gather intelligence on our mysterious friend is not something father would disagree with, especially since she seemed to recognize you," Hashirama said brightly, "Besides, he's never going to believe that she's from the future even if we do tell him."

"That's because she's not from the future!" Tobirama spat out, "And father can send anyone else—"

"Yes, but he's not going to," Hashirama said, as if he wasn't already in enough trouble after the Uchiha debacle.

Though, perhaps Hashirama was right, perhaps it would have come to this anyway or sending out Tobirama along with some hidden escort to meet her face to face. Perhaps they would have even invited her to the Senju clan and seen if she was fool enough to accept. However, all too soon he, Hashirama, and an armed older clansman were off to the capital to find the girl without a clan to her name.

* * *

She was not particularly difficult to find, but then, as intelligence reports had supposedly noted she made no effort to be difficult to find. Asking around for a red headed shinobi they were immediately set on the trail of one Eru Lee, shinobi god of luck and fortune, who had in the weeks she'd been here not simply holed up in some inn tending her wounds but racked up a massive fortune at every gambling ring she entered and then ruthlessly disposed of any and every hitman set after her.

That, in fact, was what most of them had assumed they were here to do. Shinobi dogs to set loose on the little girl shinobi who more than often than not was mistaken for a pretty little boy.

Hashirama, by the fifth time, had stopped trying to correct them.

She also had continued her trend of asking bizarre questions, using jutsus for inane yet miraculous acts such as building objects out of nothing or reversing entropy, and not bothering to look for any kind of clan.

"You know," Hashirama said awkwardly as they walked through the city, towards the address of the inn she was reputedly staying at, the third one she seemed to have inhabited after being chased out of the first two, "It's a wonder she hasn't been kidnapped by the Uzumaki."

She could pass for one easily enough, or at the very least a bastard child, and Tobirama wondered if they or another clan hadn't already only to have been beaten back. It seemed a bizarre conclusion to reach, especially when thinking about a shinobi that young and without any clansmen to protect her, but with a technique like teleportation…

At that thought both he, Hashirama, and their escort came to a sudden stop as through the window of an inn came a screaming shinobi. Dark hair, dark eyes, tan skin that could belong to just about any clan at all if not to a clanless bounty hunter. Quickly following him was a kunai burying itself in the man's right hand, forcing him to drop his own blade, then another burying itself in his left.

A young and clear voice sounded over his pained cries as well as the general commotion on the street and screaming as people ran from the fighting, "I'm not in the mood."

The girl jumped out of the window, positioning herself on the roof even as she drew another blade from thin air, waiting for the man to make his move.

"Luckily for you, I'm also not in the mood for senseless violence," she said, though her gaze, her killing intent, didn't falter in the slightest, "So why don't you run along to whatever hole you managed to crawl out of."

Her eyes, Tobirama thought in a mix of fear and wonder, didn't seem human at all. It was as if a dragon, a god, was peering down out of her small form with her red hair lifting in the slight breeze. And her chakra…

It was more chakra than Tobirama would have thought possible to exist inside a human body.

The man reached for the hilt of a kodachi on his waist, only to stop as another blade flew right next to where his fingers were. With wide dark eyes, hesitation, fear, and pain written into every pore of his skin, he stood and made a hasty retreat.

The girl then looked down at them, clearly having realized who and what they were the entire time, "Well, are you guys going to go and make my day too?"

"Oh, no," Hashirama said with an awkward laugh, rubbing at the back of his head, "We actually just came to talk."

The girl considered them from the high ground, cocking her head and inspecting each of them in turn, with her eyes lingering on Hashirama and then Tobirama in turn. Then, as if she saw no problem with this at all, she nodded, shrugged, and said, "Sure."

She then hopped off the roof, seemed to float in the air for a moment or two before touching the ground, then motioned for them to follow her even while with a twitch of her fingers she fixed the window and the street, "We'll get ramen, it's been a while since I've had ramen."

Soon enough they were indeed in a small ramen restaurant, Hashirama and Tobirama on one side of the booth and the girl on another while their watcher quietly surveyed all the exits and signs for an Uchiha threat, while also no doubt listening to whatever it was the girl had to say.

The girl, however, seemed completely unconcerned by this or anything at all as she instead dug into her noodles with an Uzumaki's enthusiasm. Maybe, Tobirama thought, she really was related to the Uzumaki clan.

"So…" Hashirama started, trailing off when all he saw was the girl's eyes lift towards him. They really were a fascinating and intimidating color, Tobirama thought, a clear-cut green that he'd never seen in eyes before.

"So," Hashirama said, clearing his throat as if this could give him the authority and confidence he needed, and then said, "I never thanked you that day."

"For what?" she asked, so casually too, without any hint of respect or sign of recognition of just who she was talking to.

"You made us all stop and breathe for a moment," Hashirama said kindly, mind wandering back to a few weeks ago, "If you hadn't done that I don't know if I, if Madara, would have gotten a chance to stop everyone. You may even be responsible for saving my life."

The girl gave him an odd sort of look, a red raised eyebrow, and said, "Oh, somehow I doubt that."

"All the same," Hashirama said with a shrug before announcing, "Know that you have both the thanks of Senju Hashirama and his little brother Senju Tobirama!"

It was… Well, it was a way to introduce themselves as they hadn't done it earlier, the girl had yet to ask or even drop her own name to them for all that they had picked it up on their search for her. Eru Lee, he thought, it was an oddly masculine name, and the surname was entirely unfamiliar.

She hardly looked bothered though, as if she'd known their last name since the very beginning. That probably shouldn't be shocking, clans made it their business to know the main branches of any predominant clan, but all the same something about her knowing that alarmed Tobirama.

As much as that knowledge seemed to encourage Hashirama.

"That said, we didn't really get a chance to talk," Hashirama continued, "And I was just wondering, well, just about everything. Your name, where you come from, and you said you were looking for a village called Konohagakure."

"Them's fighting words," the girl responded, like Hashirama and Tobirama were supposed to even understand what that meant. At their blank expressions she said, "I'm not sure it's a good idea for me to tell you something like that."

"Huh?" Hashirama asked, "Why not?"

"Well," the girl stopped, looked to her right, looked to her left, then seemed to decide there was nothing for it and cast a genjutsu.

She did it without hand seals, without even breaking a sweat, and yet Tobirama could almost feel the attention of everyone around them pointed away. Even their keeper seemed as if he hadn't noticed, kept staring around them searching for threats, not realizing that he was no longer hearing their conversation.

It was… This was the kind of genjutsu, he thought, that the Uchiha who mastered the sharingan at its highest levels were supposedly capable of producing.

"The universe may explode," the girl finished her own sentence, as if nothing had happened as she kept digging into her ramen.

"The universe may explode?!" Hashirama asked, apparently willing to hang on her every word while Tobirama was sitting hyperventalting in his seat. She could kill them, he thought, she could kill all of them with ease even with a watcher here.

She could have killed them that day in the clearing, bleeding out, if she had been "in the mood for senseless violence".

"Afraid so, it's a potentially very delicate thing, this world of ours, and I'm rather fond of it," she said as she finally finished off her bowl of ramen, "So, if there's a way to not blow it up then I'm going to do my best to make sure it happens. The not blowing up happening, I mean, blowing it up is my least favorite thing to do."

Hashirama's eyes were filled with stars as he slammed his hands on the table, grinned at the girl, and said, "It's because you're from the future, isn't it!"

The girl's eyes went comically wide, she paled, and Tobirama felt himself coming to a horrible, impossible, realization, "Oh no."

"… No," the girl said with the kind of hesitation that clearly said she was caught in an embarrassing lie.

"You're from Konoha, me and Madara's Konoha, in the future, aren't you?" Hashirama continued even as the girl held up her hands in self-defense and alarm.

"Stop it, unthink that thought!" that girl commanded before pleading, "I'm serious that the world may explode or implode or something! And you know, I'd kind of like to go home."

Her eyes then strayed in horror to Tobirama, as if he was perfect evidence of her situation, and she said in quiet realization, "Except I keep trying and it keeps not working. Which means I've probably been doomed from the start, because I'm pretty damn sure I never met you guys before I met you the first time."

Finally, Tobirama found his voice, acting as the only reasonable human being at this table, "You are not from the future."

"Oh, I'm pretty sure I'm from the future," she, Lee, said in quiet horror, no longer even looking at him as she stared down at her empty bowl in despair, "And that I've damned us all, that too."

"You are not from the future," Tobirama repeated, crossing his arms in irritation and wishing one of these two idiots would listen to him, "It isn't possible."

It shouldn't have surprised him, he thought balefully, that the girl was somehow a carbon copy of his idiot older brother. Well, no, not a carbon copy he thought as he remembered her casual nonchalance and strange idioms, she was even worse than his older brother.

"The laws of your paltry reality do not apply to me," she said, as if this was a perfectly reasonable sentence to come out of anyone's mouth.

"That is not how the laws of reality—"

A hand fell on his shoulder, he looked up and saw Hashirama looking at the girl with a warm and tender smile, "You can't get home then, can you?"

The girl said nothing for a moment, her fingers curling into fists and her knuckles growing white. She looked down at the wood of the table, meeting neither of there eyes, and yet Tobirama could feel the overwhelming despair emanating from her chakra.

"No," she finally said, "Not… Not without consequences."

She had never said those words before, Tobirama somehow knew, not out loud at the very least. Whether she was from some alternate dimension or some unattainable future it hardly seemed to matter, wherever home or family was, it was lost to her now.

Though he didn't want to, even though he fought against it, he felt a twinge of pity in his heart.

And if he felt a twinge of pity, his brother felt a maelstrom. Crocodile tears were gushing out of his eyes and he didn't hesitate to take her pale hands in his, squeezing them tightly as if they were already the best of friends if not family, and he said in his own broken voice, "That's so horrible! I don't even know what I'd do if I was separated from my entire clan, taken from Konoha, and thrust into this warring era. You've got to stay with us, you've just got to, and I'll do everything I can to make it up to you, I promise!"

"Stay with us?!" Tobirama asked, but Hashirama was nodding even as the girl's expression changed from grief, to bewilderment, and then to something truly touched by Hashirama's generosity.

No, touched wasn't the right word for it, it was something stronger and more heartfelt than that. Something, Tobirama thought, he did not need aimed at his older brother right now.

"Of course she's staying with us. She saved my life, your life, and she's from Konoha so she's practically family!"

She didn't save anyone's life and she wasn't from the future!

"I—" the girl started, clearly meaning to decline, but Hashirama just leaned closer to her.

"If you can't go home then we'll just go ahead and make a home for you!" he said, grinning at her even through his tears, "It's the least we can do, I can do, I know it!"

"Hashirama," Tobirama said quietly, "Think for a minute, what will father say?"

"Father?" Hashirama asked, blinking away his tears in confusion before offering Tobirama a wry smile and motioning towards the girl, "You honestly think father's going to say no to something like this?"

That… was a horrifyingly good point.

Butsuma was a very shrewd man, ruthless, and sometimes Tobirama considered him rather heartless as well. Hashirama was not his father's son, but all the same, he would be delighted by this outcome. Once the girl's lack of origins were assured, her loyalties earned, there would be no question of tying her into the Senju clan.

Still, that didn't mean Tobirama liked it.

"And I've never had a sister before!" Hashirama said as he turned his attention back to her, "We have a cousin, Toka, but I'm not sure she really counts."

Tobirama wasn't sure Toka counted either, but he'd never make the mistake of saying it out loud. Toka, aside from being ruthless and intimidating enough to shape herself into a warrior rather than medic or poison mistress, had a truly terrifying temper.

Still, he thought as he eyed the girl, he wouldn't exactly call this one that much more feminine than Toka.

"And don't worry about Tobi, he'll get over it," Hashirama said, patting Tobirama on the head as if he was that much younger and more foolish than Hashirama, "I promise, you'll be just like family!"

Something about that statement seemed to strike a chord with her, either because she missed the family she had or perhaps she'd never had family at all. Still, her smile was soft and tender as she squeezed Hashirama's hands in turn, "Thank you."

And that was how Senju Tobirama gained the sister he'd never wanted.

* * *

As Hashirama had predicted, Senju Butsuma had no complaints, had after interrogating the girl himself been rather gleeful (while also slightly put off by the girl's… quirks). After a small demonstration of her abilities, her alarming confidence or else ego as she claimed to be capable of any feat of ninjutsu or genjutsu, if with only slightly above average taijutsu, she had not even been put into one of the branch member households but instead straight into the main house into what had once been Kawarama's room.

Tobirama didn't know if it was perceptiveness or a lack of material wealth, but she had done her best to disturb Kawarama's possessions as little as possible. As if she knew, somehow, that it would never truly be her room but that she was instead staying in it so long as the head of the Senju clan saw fit.

She was…

She was a genius, odd, but a genius on par with either him or his older brother. She not only performed jutsus without handseals, but invented them on a whim, great feats of chakra manipulation that Tobirama would not have thought possible.

More, she had an innate understanding of her techniques that Tobirama hadn't predicted.

Early, somewhere in that first month of her stay, he found himself in her room late at night as she was recording down strange foreign characters in an empty notebook. English, she had called it when he asked, the strange language spoken on the strange island of her birth. All of it to recreate the library that had once existed, in Hashirama's Konoha, a place she seemed certain she could no longer reach.

As she scribbled, pausing and considering sketches of strange people and places, she said, "You're right, you know, I don't think time travel would be possible for anyone else. It requires an infinite amount of chakra."

He'd blinked, gave her a dumbfounded look that he couldn't help, because she'd said so casually what he'd never managed to convince his brother.

"The trouble is," she said as she smiled at him, "I do believe I have an infinite amount of chakra. That, or reality itself is less consistent than I thought."

"No one has an infinite amount of chakra," he responded, almost fondly at this point, "Your body wouldn't be able to handle it. Even the Uzumaki and the Senju have a limited amount of chakra."

"Yes, well," Lee said with a small shrug of her shoulders and her own fond smile, "I somehow do, I find it's best to not try and make sense of it. Though I suppose you can't help yourself."

Too soon, perhaps, he found her easily fitting into daily life. This strange, almost Uzumaki sister they'd never had. She was pulled into Hashirama's training along with his hijinks, stayed up late hours into the night with him to discuss all the small details that had led to the creation of her own Konohagakure as well as what a world with hidden villages looked like, discussed theorhetical ninjutsu with Tobirama, and was eventually sent on missions to protect clients or antagonize rival clans.

And he…

He liked her, for all that he wished to remain wary of her, cautious of her, he liked her. In time he learned to shrug off her strange insistence of being from the future (of having before then lived in some kind of warped genjutsu), and smiled at her odd idioms as well as her bizarre jokes and references to things no one understood.

For all her frustrating stubbornness, her baffling power, and her utter inability to suffer fools despite being one herself she was somehow rather easy to like. Months passed by, then a year, then two and he became… More than simply used to her.

And sometimes, in the dead of night as he would stare up at the ceiling in thought, that worried him.

* * *

"Who was Minato?"

Tobirama couldn't remember when he first asked that, whether she had been staying with them a month or two, only that it was winter and that the heavy snowfall had kept the clan more or less housebound until the roads opened once again and patronage and warfare could commence once again.

They were in his room, her writing away in her books again, this time supposedly rewriting a tale of some kind of horrifying haunted inn sucking the chakra out of a young boy called, "The Shining" while he was once again lost to the world of fuinjutsu.

Hashirama was somewhere with their father, or else he likely would have been there as well, distracting them both until an irritated Tobirama would throw them both out. Still, for all that he loved his brother, these quiet peaceful moments of thought without him were nice as well.

Sitting in a room without feeling the need to say a word to anyone, feeling the steady thrum of their chakra behind him… It was strangely comforting.

Still, it was his own quiet, pensive question that broke the silence.

"Namikaze Minato is my best friend," she said, closing her book and looking up at him, "My writing him out of existence, or locking that existence from this timeline doesn't change that."

She mentioned that name often, it sometimes seemed to just slip naturally off her tongue with no explanation at all, this omnipresent Namikaze Minato.

"Namikaze is a name from wind," Tobirama said quietly, not in accusation or even curiosity, merely stating a simple fact.

She nodded, not alarmed in the least, "His parents were merchant civilians from wind, travelling to Konoha to make their fortune… They didn't make it to the village, Minato and I met in the orphanage."

The way she said it made it seem as if both these things were common, orphans, and immigrants from other countries to Konoha. That was a common theme in her stories, he'd learned, it was true that those as young as Itama or Kawarama tended not to die but… But Hashirama's Konoha, in the fully glory that he dreamt it, had not been realized in her world.

There were wars between these hidden villages almost constantly, ones that could bring entire nations to their knees. The clans still often were divided, for all that they formed a council and nominated the leader of their village. More, though the Uchiha had made peace with the Senju that peace was often a tried one with the Uchiha remaining true to honing their craft as well as their grudges.

Hers was not a perfect world, but then, that was perhaps why Tobirama could entertain the idea of believing in it.

"You miss him," Tobirama said, not coldly, but with little emotional inflection either.

"Yes," Lee responded, in much the same manner, "It's always surprising, the moments that I seem to forget about missing him, of course then it comes back in full force. It's what I think missing a limb must be like, you go on for so long with it, that when it's gone it's devastating but you have to learn to live with it. So, you do, and you go on, except every once in a while, there's some task or some thought that just reminds you that the limb isn't there anymore. You feel its phantom pains… I think I'll always miss Namikaze Minato like that."

He could ask more, could ask her if it was so terrible being in the Senju clan, could ask her if she truly was moving on or was still lingering, but somehow the words wouldn't come out of his mouth. Not then and not months or years later either, Tobirama didn't want to think about Namikaze Minato or the idea that if Lee could, if she'd had even the slightest hope that it was possible, she would have been long gone without even bothering to say goodbye.

Not simply for Konoha but for Namikaze Minato.

* * *

It was inevitable that Lee would eventually cross paths with Madara and Izuna. Tobirama would not go so far as to say that he and Hashirama ran across the pair often, but it was often enough that a pattern easily formed over the years. Always, Madara and Hashirama would engage in battle which was really more like an overly vicious spar, neither truly engaged in one another's death.

For all that that friendship, that damnable friendship, had faded between them there still was a spark of something there.

It was not the same for Tobirama and Izuna.

One false move, Tobirama thought, one careless glance towards those spinning eyes and Tobirama was dead. Similarly, the moment Uchiha Izuna let down his guard, then Tobirama would destroy him without mercy. Theirs was a dance of death, a certainty that one of them, someday, somehow, was going to die at the hands of the other.

And that neither of them could afford to leave this world.

Still, it took several years until Lee was with them for a clash with the main branch of the Uchiha family. And, as always, it was only a second until the usual sort of pattern emerged, Hashirama against Madara, Tobirama against Izuna, and Eru Lee against the spare.

Except, apparently, the spare was no match for Eru Lee.

Tobirama halted, slid to a stop as he watched the body of an unconscious Uchiha clansman fly into Izuna, knocking him off balance and pinning him to the ground. Tobirama glanced over at Izuna, checking to see that he was paralyzed in place by Lee, before glancing back at her and noting, "I was taking care of that."

"You were slow," Lee said rather dismissively, ignoring Izuna's growing desperation and terror as he watched red-headed death walk towards him.

"So, who is this anyway?" Lee asked as she looked down at him, not quite brazen or stupid enough to meet Izuna's eye, but entirely too dismissive of Uchiha Izuna's prowess. He was not a man to be underestimated, Tobirama had bitter experience with that.

"You mean you don't know?" Tobirama asked, "Haven't you paid attention to anything during the past three years?"

"Well," Lee said, rubbing the back of her head as she considered his question, "Define paying attention."

Which meant that she hadn't been paying any attention at all. He should have expected as much, Hashirama had found out rather early that Lee's knowledge of the history of Konoha was patchy at best. Apparently, she had been taught it, along with supposedly being taught the art of being a kunoichi, she'd just forgotten all of it or else skipped the lessons since the answer was always, "the will of fire".

"You know, that's rather sad, Lee, as I'm sure he knows exactly who you are," Tobirama pointed out, as he was sure that the Uchiha along with every other clan had gone very far out of their way to figure out just who this new Senju ward was and why she was so… Well, herself.

"And I care because?" Lee asked, infuriatingly blasé and casual as usual. Which, he supposed given the fact that she truly did seem to be effortlessly invulnerable she had a right to, but that didn't make it any less frustrating.

"You care because that is Uchiha Izuna, younger brother of the Uchiha clan head!" Tobirama said before moving his finger to point at Madara still battling against Hashirama, Madara raining down competitive insults at his brother like they were having a grand old time, "And that fool is Uchiha Madara, head of the Uchiha clan!"

"Oh," Lee said for a moment, unimpressed as always by anyone's title and position, but then her eyes lit up in recognition, "Oh, oh wait, Madara, I know that name…"

"You should," Tobirama scoffed, since Uchiha Tajima's passing it had been said often enough.

"He's the Madara, isn't he!" Lee said, a bright spark in her eyes as she looked over at him, "He looks way less crazy than I thought he would."

"The Madara?" Tobirama asked, suddenly not liking where this was going.

"Oh, you know, Senju Hashirama's crazy best friend who tried to burn down the village with a bijuu after committing epic betrayal against Hashirama and raving like a lunatic in front of his entire clan," to this dump of rather horrifying information Lee added with a bright smile, "He's infamous."

Anything could have come out of her mouth, he thought, anything at all, and it would not have matched whatever the hell she'd just said. Even Izuna, awaiting death as he was on the ground, seemed more bewildered than he was terrified at the moment.

"Burn down the village," Tobirama said slowly, "With a bijuu."

Where the hell would Uchiha Madara even manage to acquire a tailed beast?

"I always figured he watched too many Godzilla movies and had a hankering to upgrade from Madera to Mothra," Lee explained, which of course, didn't explain anything at all. In fact, as usual, he wasn't sure that a third of that were even proper words.

"Izuna!" the man in question finally seemed to catch sight of his younger brother and the rather horrifying position he was in. Madara flew away from Hashirama, flinging himself over his younger brother to protect him from the finishing blow only to find himself also pinned to the earth with the rest of them.

"I love ninjutsu," Lee said with a rather foxlike grin on her face, before it disappeared as she noted, "And he still doesn't look that crazy up close… Although his hair is certainly out of control enough."

"You!" Madara said, "You're that—"

"Lee!" Hashirama said as he darted next to them, looking panicked, horrifyingly panicked at the idea that they could very well kill them here and now. This could be the end, Tobirama realized, of the current Uchiha clan leadership, the war could be over for at least a few years and…

"Oh, Hashirama, I caught your best friend here," Lee said as she motioned down to Madara, "You should really rethink that, by the way, you can do better."

While Izuna was still bitter and quiet apparently Madara felt the need to express his rage and fear very loudly, "You've got some mouth, don't you woman!"

"The woman is speaking," Lee said drily, barely even glancing down at Madara as she crossed her arms and said, "So, I figure you're in charge what with being clan heir and oldest brother. What do we do now?"

What…

What did they do now?

They had been delivering a message from the capital to a diplomat's estate, it had hardly warranted the three of them, but it had been through enemy territory and contained sensitive information. They had not been sent out to tangle with the Uchiha for all that it had happened.

They could finish he mission, but of course, they could finish the mission and also end them. Then Tobirama would never have to fear death at Uchiha Izuna's blade again…

"Leave them," Hashirama said, as if there wasn't a doubt in the world.

Izuna, even Madara gaped, because it would be so easy to do it here and now. So, incredibly, easy, and yet Hashirama didn't look as if he'd considered any other option.

"Someday we'll have peace," Hashirama said with the easiest and brightest grin in the world, "When I'm clan head I will make it my largest priority, and I want even the Uchiha clan to be a part of that."

"Sure, I guess I like the Uchiha well enough," Lee said, blinking her large green eyes, before pointing down at Madara, "I'm just not sure I like that guy."

"Madara's a good friend of mine," Hashirama said, smiling as he noted Madara's gaping expression, as if he had not realized Hashirama still considered him a friend.

"Madara's a piece of garbage," Lee countered, with her usual utterly unimpressed look that she so often gave either Tobirama or Hashirama.

"Who are you calling a piece of garbage, woman?!" Madara cried out, "You don't even have the decency to look like a woman so if one of us is trash it's—"

"Boring, loud garbage," Lee interjected, and with a wave of her hand tearing the voice from Madara so all he could do was flap his gums soundlessly. She'd… Well, that one was new, Tobirama thought as he glanced down at the Uchiha.

"All the same," Hashirama said, pressing his hands together and giving Lee a pleading expression as if it was anything but his choice that would keep them alive or condemn them to death.

"All the same, I guess it's your call," Lee said, giving Madara his voice back with another twitch of her fingers.

"I will murder you, woman! Do you hear that, I will murder you in your sleep and—"

"Don't make threats you can't keep," Lee said, sounding resigned to Madara's violent death threats and whining, "Besides, since we're all here anyway…"

She gave Madara a contemplative look, one that seemed to actual intimidate him as he paled beneath her gaze, "Madara, you're clan head, aren't you?"

He gave her a look, then another, then balked, "Are you really asking me that?!"

"This Konoha thing should happen, all this bloodshed is pointless and distressing. Your father didn't think it could stop, Senju Butsuma didn't think it could stop, but you aren't your father and Hashirama isn't his. So, even if you're a hop, skip, and a jump from being a psychotic conspiracy theorist who burns down all his hopes and dreams, when Hashirama becomes clan head, come and talk to us."

"Or die," Lee said as she leaned over him with a carefree grin, "Since, in the long term, those are really the only two options I'll let you have."

She then looked over at the equally stunned Tobirama and Hashirama, "Let's go finish this up, all of this ninjutsu makes me hungry."

Then as they took off, running back under the cover of the forest and towards their final destination, Lee cried back over her shoulder, "Cake or death, Uchiha Madara, it's not that hard of a decision to make!"

It was a good thing Tobirama wasn't Madara, he thought, or he might have just denied her out of spite.

* * *

Hashirama's engagement to Uzumaki Mito had been set in stone almost since his birth, certainly, since very early childhood. Their clan had always had very close ties with the Uzumaki, Tobirama's mother having been an Uzumaki as well.

It was no strange thing then when the date finally came and the Uzumaki hime arrived at the Senju clan grounds. And it was good that his brother seemed to like her, perhaps even came to love her. She balanced him, was a more pragmatic, tempered, soul to her young and energetic husband.

It was not perhaps the match Tobirama, or Hashirama, had envisioned but they worked well together and Tobirama could see how, in time, they could be more than simply an arranged marriage. It was very hard, he thought at the very least, not to love Hashirama.

There had been no such plans for Tobirama.

He was the spare, one of four brothers to have been born, and the only other besides Hashirama to survive adulthood. Only one marriage arrangement had been planned so far in advance by their father, who pragmatically realized that only one of his sons might survive, and above all it was their ties with the Uzumaki that the Senju clan wished to maintain.

Negotiating with other clans… it became complicated and usually fell apart by the time the engagement came to an end.

Tobirama then had expected to marry within the clan at some point, to Toka perhaps or one of his other cousins, but it had seemed a far off and distant possibility that he didn't need to concern himself with.

It was thus something of a surprise when, at the age of sixteen, he was brought into his father's study to discuss the prospect of marriage.

"You want me to marry Lee?"

"The girl is tied very closely to our clan already," Butuma noted gravely, "But if she does not marry within the clan those blood limits will disappear."

And they were, after years of study and observation, some kind of blood limit combined with her own strange genius. Tobirama was working on his own teleportation technique, hiraishin, through the use of fuinjutsu but he doubted he'd ever be able to master the technique to the effect that she had.

So, of course his father would expect, no direct, her to marry within the clan.

"I—"

"You are displeased," Butuma asked, looking down curiously at his son, "You seem to get along well enough."

More, this was something where Tobirama's opinion would not matter. It did not matter if he was displeased or not, it was going to happen.

"No, father," Tobirama said, "Simply that it was a possibility I had never considered."

He had thought, if anything, she would marry one of his cousins. Somehow, though he himself was not engaged, he had thought his own marriage would be reserved to broker some strange alliance with another clan. The possibility of marrying Eru Lee herself had simply never occurred to him.

"Good, as she lives here I imagine a long engagement period is hardly necessary, simply a few weeks to prepare the wedding," Butuma said, before coughing into his sleeve, an action he'd been taking too often lately no matter the healers looking at him, "You two bringing back that girl was truly the most fortunate thing that has happened to our clan in a long time."

Yes, Tobirama thought, it truly was. Though he doubted his father realized it, that any other clan had truly realized it, if she were used to her full potential then the war between all the clans could have ended already with only the Senju surviving.

It was by either chance or fate that Eru Lee believed whole heartedly in his brother's vision of the world rather than his father's.

"Will you be speaking to her next?" Tobirama asked, an interesting question at that as Lee had never truly gotten along with Butuma. She chafed at authority, in some ways, and the man had made it clear that there was no real emotional connection between the pair of them, those ties lay with his sons.

He doubted the man telling Lee that she was going to marry Tobirama whether she liked it or not would go down well.

His father must have been thinking the same thing as he said, "No, I think I'll leave that to you."

So, a short while later Tobirama closed the door softly behind him, staring blankly into the hallway as he thought on the future he had never considered. A wife, not just any wife, but the strange foreigner Lee who would be his wife in a few weeks' time. The strange foreign girl who could have been his sister and who he was certain was his best friend…

He wasn't ready.

He was standing petrified, almost as if held by her or a Nara's jutsu in the hallway, his feet perfectly still even as he willed them to move forward.

He wasn't ready.

Everything was changing, would change, and he wasn't ready.

In a daze he pushed himself away from the door and began walking through the hallway, on autopilot heading towards her chakra outside in the yard with Hashirama's, sparring once again. His mind kept roving over possibilities only to slam into a brick wall of a world he had never considered but was now a reality.

More, what if she said no? No one else would or could say no, not to the Senju clan head, but Eru Lee had never and would never be a Senju. She was not bound by the laws of their world, as she had stated in the beginning, and if she did not wish it then she and Tobirama would not marry no matter what his father thought about it.

And he did not know if he found that relieving or heartbreaking.

Outside the summer sun was glinting off her hair as well as the blade of her throwing knives as she cut through Hashirama's trees one after the other. As always during these fights, her eyes were only for his older brother, weaving her way past all of his techniques while casting her own without a word.

They called his brother god of shinobi, and he was, but Eru Lee was something to behold in her own right.

"They're going to destroy the yard again," Mito said in amusement, watching the pair as she practiced her calligraphy from the porch, safely out of the way of any stray bits of earth or mud produced by the pair.

At his lack of answer, she looked up, blinked at him, "Tobirama, is something wrong?"

He didn't answer, couldn't answer, just kept staring at Lee, a few years older than himself and certainly well into adulthood. Past marriageable age by many clans' standards as well as civilians…

Mito looked away from him, a determined look on her face and shouted towards the sparring pair, "Hashirama, your brother has news!"

They stopped, bounded over to them, both covered in sweat as well as dirt, with Lee looking every inch a warrior and nothing like a bride.

"What is it?" Hashirama asked, then with more alarm asked, "Did something happen?!"

All Tobirama could do was stare, look Lee directly in the eye, and say with a calmness he couldn't feel, "We're getting married."

Then, with equal, lightheaded calmness, he walked away, back inside to his room where he could stare at the wall for a few hours without thinking anything at all. Even as all three of them cried out after him, asking for explanations or repetition to a sentence they'd all heard perfectly well.

Senju Tobirama and Eru Lee were going to be married.

She came for him not long after, though long enough that he suspected she'd talked to Hashirama or even Butuma, she entered the room and sat on his bed next to him, close enough that their legs and hands were touching.

For a moment they simply sat in silence, as they often did, staring at his bookcase together in that companionable quiet he'd always so enjoyed with her.

"So," she said finally, "We're getting married."

The spell was broken and Tobirama could turn to look at her, watch the way the twilight painted her face and her a golden red, and said, "We do not have to get married."

"Not according to your father," she said with a smile, a joke, as they both knew that to Eru Lee his father's law meant very little.

"It would be difficult," Lee said finally, "If we didn't."

"Yes," Tobirama agreed, Hashirama would let it slip by, but their father who was still clan head would not be pleased in the slightest. More, if Tobirama was rejected, he would try to pair Lee with anyone and everyone else in the clan.

At least Tobriama knew her and vice versa.

"So, with that, we're getting married," Lee concluded, as if it really was as simple as that.

He spared her a look, which she returned with her idiotic grin that was so similar to his brother's, "You know, if you really don't want to you don't—"

"It's not that," he said, "Things were just… comfortable."

"I suppose," Lee said, in that musing tone of hers when considering the state of the strange world they lived in, "But things change, my life is all about dramatic life changing events if you think about it. I left everything I knew in England, then everything I knew in Konoha, compared to that becoming Senju Tobirama's bride hardly seems that strange at all."

"But is it something you want, Lee?"

He had no illusions that either of them were in a position to marry for love, even for friendship, but all the same he couldn't help but hope that it was something he desperately wanted and she wanted as well. He wanted to live in that world where his brother's dreams were possible, he wanted it more than he wanted air, and he could at least have the illusion that this would not be forced.

That they would have each other not simply because it was the least painful option.

But she smiled at him, that warm, tender, and compassionate smile. Without hesitation she lifted a hand, paler than his own to his cheek, brushed her thumb against his cheekbones and leaned in to brush her lips against his, "Yes, I think it is."

As he responded, his lips curving into a smile against his will, he couldn't help but think it as well.

* * *

His father's illness grew worse and eventually it became clear that the man would not die on the battlefield but instead in his own home, withering away into nothingness while his sons watched. He had always been an imposing man but in his bed he looked so frail and small, as if the world itself had sucked the vitality out of him.

Hashirama, as expected, was named successor, and true to his word immediately set about forming alliances with the other clans in the area to make Konoha a reality. All, of course, while they waited for the Uchiha to make an appearance.

"Why did Madara come, in your world?" Tobirama asked her late one night when they were already in bed. He wouldn't deny, if his brother asked, that Tobirama's pillow talk with his wife tended to take strange meandering paths. However, thankfully, Hashirama had never asked.

Lee thought for a moment, her eyes flickering over his facial features as she thought back to years ago and a Konoha that was not yet built, and said slowly, "It took… great effort."

Running a hand through her unbound hair, twisting it in the large curls, he waited for more of an explanation.

"From what I remember, from what the future you told me, he had once intended to, but had had to fight against the opinion of the elders as well as his younger brother to do so. The war was still raging, at that point, the Senju and Uchiha at a standstill, it wasn't clear which of them would win."

That was no longer the case in this world, he thought, Eru Lee had brought them a definitive edge and every clan knew it. Skirmishes had become less frequent, retreats more so, as Lee was sent out into the field as some kind of vicious guard dog of Senju territory.

"Then, one day, you fatally wounded his younger brother in a battle," Lee said, looking a bit grim, "After his death Madara went mad with grief, vowing to see his clan dead before bartering with the Senju. The war turned in favor of the Senju, the elders even going so far to change their position with Madara alone refusing, until it came down to one last skirmish. Hashirama asked him what it would take to surrender, to build Konoha with him, and he asked for your death, the death of Senju Hashirama's younger brother."

She paused here, looked away from him, as if only just now realizing the weight of this tale which must have once meant nothing to her at all. Even though she spoke of his own death he leaned forward, brushed his lips against her as a sign that it was alright to continue, that he didn't fear the death some other world had offered him.

With a deep breath she started again, "Hashirama, of course, wouldn't do it, but instead offered his own life in place of yours. Just before he did it, Madara begged him to stop, and officially surrendered to build Konohagakure with the Senju clan and many others."

She didn't say what happened next, what had prompted that Madara, maddened by grief, to burn down the village he himself had helped create. She left that instead to Tobirama's imagination.

It was horrifying, though, how very much that sounded like his older brother.

Instead of lingering on the future that could have, perhaps would have, been he asked, "Do you think he'll come?"

"Well, Tobirama," Lee said after a moment, "I offered him two choices: cake or death. Which would you pick?"

Tobirama stared at her for a moment, taking her in, and with a wry smile couldn't help but reply, "Honestly, I think I might just pick death out of spite."

He didn't even bother to dodge the pillow she threw in his face.

And when the day came that a messenger came from the Uchiha, to meet them in neutral territory, Lee could only grin at him as if to say that she had told him so all along.

"Of course," she said as she, Tobirama, and Hashirama prepared to leave for this bright future that Tobirama had scarcely dared to believe in, "If he does try to burn down the village in a fit of utter madness, I will end him."

"I'm sure he won't," Hashirama said with a rather nervous laugh, "No, I know he won't. You'll see."

Yes, they would see, after all the centuries of warfare and hatred, after Lee's own might have been that was not quite what Hashirama had hoped for, they would see what they made of this brave new world.

* * *

 **Author's Note: It finally happened, Lee in the clan wars, we've come so far people. Prompted for the 2300th review of "Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds" by Meilinfan who asked for a "Default Origins" style story featuring Lee in the clan war era with Madara, Hashirama, and then it somehow mostly became about Tobirama because that's what I do.**

 **Thanks for reading, reviews are much appreciated.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or Naruto**


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